The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “And thou’rt aware that my husband resembles him in every particular,” she said. “In short, I am no less virginal than thyself, and no more innocent.”

  “Let us speak no more of’t!” Ebenezer begged.

  “One more thing only.” She removed her hand and regarded him seriously. Ebenezer felt certain that she was about to confess her unnatural passion—a prospect the more alarming because of his suspicion, vouched stoutly for by Burlingame, that to some extent he shared it—but instead she declared that he must not think her naïve with regard to Henry Burlingame. Hadn’t she seen that he took his deepest pleasure in the two together? Hadn’t he revolted her time and again at St. Giles by his amorous disquisitions on everything from asparagus-spears to bird dogs of both sexes? “Methinks ’tis easier to know another than to know thyself,” she said. “There is little in Henry’s character that is foreign to me.” She smiled for the first time and blushed at a sudden recollection. “Dare I tell you something he neglected to? I asked him, ere the twain of you left London, wherefore you made so much of your virginity, when I longed so to have done with mine! And I said farther that were you he, the both of us would put an end to innocence.”

  Ebenezer shifted uncomfortably.

  “His reply,” Anna continued, watching Ebenezer’s face, “was that you harbored in your breast a grand and secret passion for one woman that the world denied you, and had liefer remain a virgin than take second choice!”

  “That is true to some extent,” the poet granted. “Howbeit, ’twas not so much the world that denied me Joan Toast, as John McEvoy, and—”

  “Stay, I did not finish. I shall confess, Eben, Henry’s news inspired me with inordinate jealousy, albeit I knew we each would marry soon or late. ’Tis that we had been so close, you know… In any case, I demanded the name of this lady who had writ such a patent on your heart, and why you’d ne’er confided in your own dear sister that once knew your every whim and thought. Henry answered that you yourself scarce realized who she was, but that e’en if you did, the force of custom would seal your lips, inasmuch as the object of your passion was—your sister!”

  Ebenezer sat upright. “Henry said that? I’Christ, there is no end to the man’s nefariousness! Do you know, Anna, he told me the selfsame thing about you? I had learned of your affair with him, you see—this was before I knew of his impotence—and I was aflame with rage and envy—”

  He cut his sentence short, but its implication hung clearly between them. The room was filled at once with tension and embarrassment, of a different order from what they had felt before; their positions on the bench were suddenly awkward; on pretext of scratching her leg, Anna slipped her hand from under his and averted her eyes.

  “So,” she said, and was obliged to clear her throat. “It would seem there was a mustard seed of truth in what he said to us.”

  For a time they could speak no more. The silence was painful, but Ebenezer could imagine no way to terminate it. Fortunately, Anna came to the rescue: in a mild, deliberate voice, as if no digression had occurred, she resumed the narrative of her journey from St. Giles, employing without comment the proposition that her motive had been to join Henry Burlingame. The poet’s heart glowed.

  “I had heard naught of his activities since 1687, when you and I abandoned him in London. Then last spring he approached me as he did you later on the Plymouth coach, disguised as Colonel Peter Sayer. When I was finally persuaded of his true identity, he told me the tale of his adventures in the provinces, his discovery of certain references to a namesake in Virginia, and the political intrigues to which he was party.”

  Ebenezer questioned her closely on this last subject, confessing his doubts about Burlingame’s good will towards him and, what was vastly more important, his misgivings about the virtuousness of Lord Baltimore’s cause and the viciousness of Coode’s. It was then necessary to waive his earlier agenda and tell of Henry’s impostures of both Charles Calvert and John Coode, and the transfer of his allegiance from the former to the latter; Bertrand Burton’s conviction that Burlingame himself was John Coode; the evidence suggesting that Coode, Lord Baltimore, Burlingame, and Andrew Cooke himself—or some combination thereof—were involved in the deplorable traffic in prostitutes and opium of which Anna had learned from Benjamin Spurdance; and finally, Ebenezer’s own sweeping suspicion that both Baltimore and Coode either did not exist save in Burlingame’s impostures, or else existed as it were abstractly, uninvolved in and perhaps even ignorant of the schemes and causes attributed to them.

  Anna listened with interest, but professed no great surprise at Burlingame’s behavior. “As to whether Lord Baltimore and John Coode are real or figmentary,” she declared, “I cannot say, albeit ’twere hard to believe that so general an assumption hath no truth in’t. Neither can I say with confidence whether the two are in sooth opposed or in league, or opposed in some matters and allied in others, or which hath the right on his side. But I have cause to think that insofar as Henry hath any genuine interest in these matters, his sympathies are with neither of those men; nor doth he truly contradict himself by declaring first for one and then for the other. The man he really admires and serves, I do believe, is Governor Nicholson.”

  “Nicholson!” Ebenezer scoffed. “He is neither this nor that, from what I hear: he is no Papist, yet he fought for James at Hounslow Heath; he was Edmund Andres’s lieutenant, and so differed with him that the two despise each other yet; Lord Baltimore chose him to be commissioned Royal Governor, thinking Nicholson shared his sympathies, but albeit Nicholson seems concerned with prosecuting Coode, he governs as if Lord Baltimore did not exist—which, to be sure, he may not.”

  Even as he articulated his objection, Ebenezer grew more and more persuaded of the likelihood of Anna’s new hypothesis, until arguments began to sound like evidence in its favor. Burlingame had early confided that his purpose was to play off Coode and Andros against Nicholson to Baltimore’s benefit—that is to say, “both ends against the middle.” But was not Nicholson truly the man in the middle, and Baltimore the extremist? From all the reports of his impatience with dreamers and radicals, his hardheadedness, daring, irascibility, and efficiency, Nicholson’s character seemed much more likely to appeal to Burlingame that Charles Calvert’s. Moreover, while not an idealist, Nicholson was (now that Ebenezer reflected on it) perhaps the only person of influence who had actually done anything to further the cause of culture and refinement, for example, in the Plantations: he had established the College of William and Mary during his tenure as lieutenant governor of Virginia, and had avowed his intention to found a similar institution in Anne Arundel Town, at public expense. Even the less creditable aspects of the man—his bastard origins, for instance, and that obscure erotic streak that alienated him from women and gave rise to rumors of everything from privateering to unnatural practices—Ebenezer could readily imagine to be attractive in Burlingame’s eyes. In short, what began as a refutation ended as a complaint.

  “Why could Henry not tell me this at the outset, as he told you?”

  “ ’Tis not mine to answer for him,” Anna said soothingly, “but he did mistrust your enthusiasm, Eben—as well about virginity as about Lord Baltimore’s commission. You know how he was wont to play devil’s advocate at St. Giles; with Henry one never knows quite where one stands.”

  There was little in this explanation to console the poet, but he held his peace while Anna went on with the story of her passage to St. Mary’s City and her discovery of Bertrand there posing as Laureate of Maryland, which Ebenezer had heard previously from Bertrand himself.

  “I was obliged to put ashore at Church Creek,” she said, “and hire a wagon-ride to Cambridge, whence I meant to make my way to Malden; but near the wharf at Cambridge I saw a wretched old beggar in conversation with some slattern of a woman, and albeit I had no idea who they were, I chanced to spy this ring on the woman’s hand—”

  “Ah, God!”

  “She was showing it to the
beggarman, and when he laughed at it she flew into a rage and cried, ‘To Hell with ye, Ben Spurdance! He is my husband nonetheless, and for aught we know that villain may have been carrying him off!’” Upon recognizing the ring as her own, Anna said, she had understood from what Bertrand had told her that the frightful-looking woman must be her sister-in-law, and the reference to Ebenezer’s being carried off by villains had greatly alarmed her. She had gone up to the pair and introduced herself, whereupon the woman, for all she had just been defending Ebenezer, now cursed him as a coward, a liar, and a pimp, flung the ring at Anna’s feet, and left, declaring she must get back to Malden before the new whoremaster, Andrew Cooke, came looking for her. This news, together with the testimony of Mr. Spurdance that Ebenezer had deserted his bride and returned with some other gentleman to England, had caused Anna to swoon away; Mr. Spurdance had revived her and told her of the state of things at Malden: that the cooper William Smith had transformed it into a den of sundry vices; that Master Andrew had arrived there with a party of strangers the day before, much concerned over his daughter’s whereabouts and distraught by the news that Ebenezer had lost the estate, and upon seeing how matters actually stood, had become so enranged as to fall victim to something like apoplexy. He was temporarily confined to bed, where he spent his time cursing mankind in general, but it was not yet clear whether he was actually unable to regain possession of the estate or whether his wrath was occasioned merely by the distracted state of his affairs; similarly, it was not known whether or in what respect he was himself involved in Captain William Mitchell’s activities.

  Ebenezer shook his head. “Marry, what is to become of it?” He described the circumstances of the court-trial at Cambridge wherein he had innocently granted Cooke’s Point away, and explained that the other man who had boarded the Pilgrim with him was Burlingame himself. “But my tale must wait till yours is done, inasmuch as it brings us to Billy Rumbly and my reason for being here. What did you then? Return to Church Creek?”

  “Aye,” Anna said. “I durst not show myself at Malden till I learned more about Father’s position, nor durst I remain in Cambridge, or he’d surely hear of’t. I begged Mr. Spurdance to say naught of having seen me, and he promised to pass on whate’er he learned, inasmuch as he too hath no small interest in Cooke’s Point. Then I took lodging in Church Creek under Meg Bromly’s name, hoping I’d learn ere my money was gone that it was safe to go to Father, or else find some clue to Henry’s whereabouts.” The end of her story reduced her again to tears. “You know the rest…”

  Ebenezer did his best to comfort her, though he too was far from tranquil. The discovery that Ebenezer and Burlingame were not forever lost made Anna frightfully ashamed of her present condition, which only utter despair could justify. On the other hand, she would not repudiate Billy Rumbly.

  “You must remember,” Ebenezer said, “he is not your husband in the eyes of God or Maryland law, nor e’en by the custom of the Ahatchwhoops, inasmuch as the union hath not been consummated.”

  “I shall wed him properly now,” Anna replied. “As for the matter of consummation, ’twere an overnice point in our case!”

  Ebenezer declared his considerable affection for Billy, but averred that insomuch as Anna’s condition at the time of choosing him had been far from responsible, she was under no moral obligation to maintain the connection. “Billy himself hath vouched for that: the ‘bargain’ you heard him allude to was our agreement that thou’rt free to leave or stay, whiche’er you choose. And Henry, after all—”

  He pressed the point no farther, aware that his footing was precarious. And as he feared, although she chose not to remind him that her devotion to Burlingame was ambiguous, Anna declared very pointedly, “I have pledged myself to Billy, Eben; would you have me break my pledge? If e’er we part, ’twill be at his behest, not mine; I shall be as good a wife to him as I am able.”

  Much mortified, Ebenezer said no more; but the subject of his original mission in Church Creek suddenly seemed more crucial than ever to him. Since despite their weariness it was unlikely that either of them would be able to sleep, he proposed that he summon Billy in from the barn and devote the remainder of the night to exposing his plight and plans. It took no more than the assertion that innumerable lives were at stake to win Anna’s approval of this proposal, and she insisted on fetching Billy herself.

  She did not return at once; Ebenezer spent the uncomfortable interval sighing at the fire. Among his myriad reflections were a few that he readily identified as jealous, though he could not banish them: Why did he object, after all, to a marriage of Anna and Billy Rumbly, who appeared to have all the virtues and none of the vices of his brother?

  When at last the two of them came in, Billy hurried to shake his hand.

  “Your presence hath achieved what I could never,” he declared with great emotion. “Whatever the outcome, my friend, I shall bless you for bringing her to herself.”

  He shook his head in awe at the spectacle of Anna washing her face and hands in the basin and deploring the state of her hair and clothes. Now that his mistress was a normal English girl, her presence, and Ebenezer’s, seemed to intimidate him; he proposed to find them something to eat and was much abashed at Anna’s insistence that preparing the food was not a husband’s chore.

  His discomfiture moved even Ebenezer to amusement and sympathy. “I’Christ, Anna, what can be done with this accursed salvage practice of eating a meal before every conversation?”

  The absence of malice in his raillery had a magical effect: the others laughed, and Billy was put somewhat at ease; pipes were brought out; a bottle of wine was discovered in the sideboard. They dined in the best of humor on cold spareribs and muscatel. Anna recounted with much animation, for Billy’s benefit, the salient points of the evening’s conversation, and though her speech made Ebenezer wonder more than ever what had detained her so long outside, both men regarded her throughout with loving eyes.

  “Anna Cooke of St. Giles in the Fields!” Billy marveled. “That wants some getting used to!”

  The Indian’s subdued, almost awkward voice and manner touched the poet deeply; he put down as unworthy the notion of somehow telling Billy about Anna’s love for Burlingame. To divert his mind from it he posed to himself the question whether “cultural energy,” so to speak, was conserved within a group after the fashion that physical energy, according to Professor Newton, was conserved within the universe. Was there, he wondered, some unreckoned law of compensation, whereby an access of cultivation on Billy’s part reduced Anna to bestiality, and her improvement, which her paramour had so devoutly wished, necessarily brought him low? He decided that quite possibly there was, and lost interest in the question. As soon as the meal was done and fresh pipes were lit he sighed and said, “There was as pleasant an hour as I’ve spent since leaving London, but my pleasure is a guilty one: e’en as I stretch my legs here and McEvoy pays court to his new mistress, two hostages for our lives are shivering in a hut on Bloodsworth Island.” He looked to Billy for approval. “With your permission, friend, I’ll state my business now.”

  Billy shrugged his shoulders, so much in the manner of Burlingame that the wine-cup trembled in Anna’s hands. “Methinks I can predict it,” he said, and explained the situation unemotionally to Anna, ending with the history of his parentage and the fate of his two brothers. “My father is very old,” he concluded, “and no match in strength and influence for Drepacca and Quassapelagh. Besides which, he hath been doubly unhappy in his sons, that not only are fated ne’er to carry on their line but seem driven as well to turn their backs upon their people and aspire to the very stars.” Turning again to Ebenezer he said, “If I may hazard another guess, you and your party in some wise fell into my father’s hands, and you saved your life by pledging to restore his long-lost son to him, or the son more lately lost, or both, to lead the Ahatchwhoops into battle. Is that the case?”

  “That is the case,” the poet admitted. “The Tayac Chicam
ec is much aggrieved by your defection, but what saved us was my news of Henry Burlingame. If ’tis not overbold of me to speak of such matters, your grandfather Sir Henry had clearly learnt some means of rising above his shortcomings on one occasion, inasmuch as he contrived to get your father on Pokatawertussan; now Chicamec believes that just as Sir Henry’s defect was transmitted to his grandsons, so perhaps his magical remedy was transmitted as well—”

  “The Rite of the Sacred Eggplant,” Billy acknowledged with a smile. “Methinks ’tis but a vulgar superstition. In any case I know naught of’t—worse luck!”

  “Nay, but your brother Henry might, so Chicamec believes, inasmuch as he shares Sir Henry’s blood and pigmentation.”

  “Whate’er this mystery of magical eggplants,” Anna said carelessly, “if it hath the effect you mentioned, Henry Burlingame knows no more of’t than doth Billy.” At once she realized her slip, and crimsoned.

  “Aye, that’s plain enough,” Ebenezer added quickly, “else he’d likely have a wife and family by this time, would he not?”

  But it seemed clear that Billy had not missed the implication of Anna’s remark. He said nothing—for one thing, Ebenezer deliberately gave him no opportunity—but his manner grew pensive, even brooding. No less than Anna, Ebenezer regretted the slip, for he sensed that it had damaged in advance the appeal he was about to make. Nevertheless he spoke on brightly, as if nothing had changed, only avoiding wherever possible any references to Burlingame.

  “There is my plight,” he declared, “e’en as you guessed it: if I fail to deliver Chicamec his son within thirty days—fewer than that, now—poor Bertrand and Captain Cairn will be dismembered and burnt at the stake—as well as I, for I have pledged myself to return if I fail, and I intend to.”